| Paris alignment | Reasoning |
|---|---|
| Transformational | AFD was amongst the first to commit to Paris alignment and has sought to support other DFIs and public banks to make and implement similar commitments. |
Explanation
AFD was the first public bank to declare it would align its financing with the Paris Agreement in its ‘100% Paris Agreement’ commitment.
In July 2017, a year and a half after the Paris Agreement was agreed, the French government gave AFD the mandate to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement (see here).
The Climate Plan (FR) published by the French government on 6 July 2017 provided AFD with an explicit mandate to implement the Paris Agreement and the 1.5°C/2°C and resilience goals.
The AFD also adopted a new Climate Strategy in 2017 that committed to “100% Paris alignment” or “100% compatibility with the Paris Agreement”. This commitment was immediate and has been applied since 2017.
AFD’s current Climate Strategy 2017-2022 states that:
“[AFD’s] strong positioning has contributed to the AFD Group’s significant participation and leadership on climate issues at both national and international level, where it is actively involved in most major initiatives undertaken with its peers and civil society actors, particularly on issues concerning the accounting and deployment of climate finance, impact metrics, approaches to climate risks, economic modelling, and financial actors’ strategic mainstreaming of climate considerations.”
In September 2017 AFD also organised a large gathering of MDBs and DFIs on the sidelines of UNGA (General Assembly of the United Nations) and the UN Climate Action Summit in New York to urge further action on the Paris alignment agenda.
Critically, AFD has sought to spread its best practice elsewhere. It has used its presidency of the IDFC, association of the largest DFIs which will run until 2023 to support others in their Paris alignment processes.
In 2020 AFD also helped to create the Finance in Common coalition and summit, which brings together the 500 public banks from all over the world on how to approach global issues and where the regional associations of DFIs all committed to Paris alignment.
AFD, IDFC and Finance and Common have benefited from the personal leadership of Remy Rioux, CEO of AFD, who was Director of finance for the French Finance Ministry during COP21 Paris in 2015. Furthermore, in the run up to COP21 Paris, AFD showed leadership by committing to increase its climate finance.
Bank staff have informed E3G that Proparco takes part in EDFI working groups to harmonize approaches on the Paris alignment assessment of direct operations and advocates for project-by-project analyses including related GHG emissions based on carbon footprint assessments (including scope 3) as well as analyses of potential lock-in into emissive development pathways. Proparco is also part of the Mainstreaming climate in financial institutions initiative.